


Drag Me Through Hell

by runaway_scars



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationship, Blood, Child Abuse, Dependence - Freeform, Depression, Dreams, FTM Tyler, Gender Dysphoria, Ghosts, Homelessness, IT'S ALL GOING TO BE GOOD I PROMISE BUT STILL DON'T READ IT IF YOU'RE TRIGGERED, Josh is being haunted, Killing, M/M, MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING OKAY, Mental Illness, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Rape, Murder, NO THEY DON'T RAPE EACH OTHER OKAY, Nightmares, Parallel Universes, Paranormal, Self Harm, Sexual Assault, Suicide, also i'm sinning and i'm so sorry, basically this is shit and i don't even know if i'll continue to write this, i have no idea what that is i wrote it while being dysphoric, i promise everything will end good, i'm going to hell anyway, minor stockholm syndrome, please don't read this is you are sensitive to any of these things, trans!tyler, trigger warning: self harm, tyler is dead here but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:06:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4987729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runaway_scars/pseuds/runaway_scars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh moves into a new house after he leaves his hometown for university.<br/>He is completely fine and sane.<br/>Until he is not.<br/>He starts seeing things in his nightmares.<br/>He starts seeing things in his HOUSE.<br/>Things that slowly drive him crazy.<br/>Things that, as he soon discovers, all point out to a horrible story from the past.<br/>He realizes that he might not be the only person living in there.</p><p>(In other words: "josh moved to england and shit starts happening aaaa", a summary via twitter user @/immoralheathen.<br/>I promise it will have a happy ending!)</p><p>TRIGGER WARNING: basically everything. Consider yourselves warned and please be safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!  
> So, um, I started writing this while feeling dysphoric and depressed. It's so bad and it's VIOLENT and it also mentions gender dysphoria so please read the tags and if any of you is easily triggered by that don't read this!  
> Honestly, no one should probably read this cause it's shit and I'm going to hell :))))))
> 
> I don't know if I'll even continue with this, let me know in the comments maybe if you think it's worth writing (probably not but okay).
> 
> Stay alive <3.

There was a time he used to dream about angels and heaven.

There was a time he used to sleep peacefully and without a single stir.

There was a time when Josh Dun didn’t have nightmares.

That time, however, was only a distant memory, buried inside the man’s sick, twisted psyche like a faded image of some childhood moment that happened too long ago to be recalled properly, and yet still lingered inside and repeated itself over and over again.

There was never a time when he was happy.

There was never a time when he didn’t wish to kill himself.

There was never a time when Tyler Joseph wasn’t ashamed of his own skin, this distorted flesh spread over his fragile bones, thin and unfamiliar, as though it was about to crack open and show his dirty, ugly insides.

Josh Dun didn’t dream about killing himself.

He dreamed about being killed.

Tyler Joseph, however, no longer dreamed at all.

Tyler Joseph was dead, and he was haunting Josh’s dreams every night, turning his life into living hell, interrupted by short intervals of his sick, fear-ridden sleep.

Josh didn’t remember when exactly his dreams started to change into horror-like visions, but he remembers the very first time he saw Tyler in his sleep. In the middle of his usual nightmare about burnt corpses and bloody sunrises, he saw a blurry, human-shaped creature emerging in the distance. Once again, Josh wanted to run, or scream, or do anything – but he couldn’t. His body was constricted, the invisible ropes of his own mind binding him tight and suffocating him. He hated that. He hated the fact that his own mind has turned away from him, sending him vivid images of carnage and despair every time he shut his eyes. He never knew his own psyche was so destroyed, yet it seemed that as days went by, he was dragged deeper and deeper into its dark embrace, losing the sense of reality and the track of time.

The creature was heading closer, and Josh tried to look away, but he felt as though his eyes were burning whenever he tried to do so. The sky was blindingly bright now, illuminated by ten suns, red and burning like real flames. The bodies on the ground began moving, twisting and reaching for Josh as the silhouette of a person walked towards him. Finally, Josh was able to recognize a face which seemed to belong to a young boy, probably in his teen years. There was something terribly wrong with it, though. As the boy came closer, the first thing that Josh’s terrified conscious could register was blood.

A lot of blood.

Blood pouring out of the boy’s ears, eyes and chest.

Crimson droplets quietly dripping down his forearms and soaking into the scorched, barren ground.

He walked silently, his moves composed and slow.

The boy looked morbid, but above all, he looked tortured. 

His eyes remained vacant, distant, gaze focused on something far away behind Josh. 

The teenager stopped a few feet from Josh, who was just standing there, unable to move, unable to fucking breathe. The only thing Josh could do was look at the boy as he pried his eyes away from the spot behind Josh’s back and look straight at him, face suddenly showing interest and gaze piercing right through Josh’s soul.

The boy came a little bit closer, still not turning his glance away from the other’s eyes.

Josh felt sick.

He could now see the boy in front of him in all of his shape. He could see the boy’s wounds, covering his little frame like streaks of red paint on a canvas. He could see the blood-stained bandages wrapped around his chest, stretching all the way down to his thighs, the ends flowing loosely in the wind. He could see his red beanie and something that looked like dark stains, maybe bruises or inexplicable shadows. They looked as if they were trying to suffocate or enslave the boy, settling dangerously around his throat and covering his palms.

Suddenly, the boy in front of Josh lifted his hand and tilted his head at him, and the next moment Josh jerked upright in his bed, covered in sweat and trying to catch his breath.

-"Fuck." – he muttered as he rested his head on his knees and tried to calm down after another terrible nightmare. He glanced at his phone, the brightness of the screen cutting through the thick darkness of his room.

The watch indicated 2.30 am.

Since then, Josh has been waking up at the exact same hour every night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!  
> I've been gone for soooo long, I know. I just had a lot of things to sort out in my life and it resulted in me being completely torn away from art in any shape or form and that also includes writing. It's funny how things brought me back to this fanfic after I abandoned it for certain death.
> 
> Nevertheless, I am happy that I managed to write this chapter and I hope you like it :).  
> I still can't promise I will continue writing this, but who knows?
> 
> Also, as usual, trigger warning. There it is. Mostly it's just mentions of death but please be careful reading it. 
> 
> Stay alive <3.

The first thing Josh noticed when he stepped through the threshold of his newly rented house was the overwhelming, freezing cold. It was dark inside, the blinds perfectly blocking almost all of the remaining afternoon daylight. He knew the building was old and had been abandoned for years but he still couldn’t believe how gloomy and damp it was inside. Josh carefully placed all his bags inside a narrow hall and took a shallow breath. The air smelled of wet soil and something that reminded him of a used rag. Shivering, he took a few steps farther, looking for a boiler or some other heating device, while simultaneously taking in the surroundings.  
The ground floor, so far, looked like a typical old British house, and by “old” he didn’t mean the cozy cul-de-sac bungalows he used to see in costume movies. The house just looked shabby and forgotten, with worn-down wainscot paneling on the walls and dirty carpet covering the floor in almost every room. A few mold patches here and there only added to the general atmosphere of doom lingering in the house. Plus, it was so dark that Josh had to hold on to a wall occasionally in order not to stumble over some piece of furniture. Finally, he reached a room that looked remotely like a kitchen, with a tiny window right below the ceiling. There was a rusty boiler on the wall, which Josh thought must have been unused for decades, because when he tried to switch it on, the device creaked and coughed with fatigue but didn’t do anything else.

-"Great" – he muttered to himself. He finally understood why the house was advertised as a bargain. When he decided to leave his hometown in Ohio and move to England he knew it wouldn’t be easy. He was born and raised in a typical small town, full of close-minded people, dirty streets and shady bars. There was never much to do there, so young Josh used to spend his early years hanging out with older kids on abandoned railway tracks or exploring the nearby forest. Occasionally he would also look for any stray cats he could find or play drums in his friend Mark’s house. Years passed but he always visited the same places, saw the same people on the streets, climbed the same trees and looked at the same fields from above.

And that was it.

That was his entire childhood.

Obviously, he went to school like any other kid and when he was a bit older he started going to house parties. He had his friends, his family, and when he turned 18 he also got his very own drum set. He met new people in high school and even had a few relationships, none of which was, sadly, meant to last, as he later discovered, because he simply didn’t like girls. That was probably the biggest self-discovery he had in his life but it didn’t quite seem to shake the usual rhythm of his everyday life. He was still Josh, still the kid from a small town who liked loud music, day-dreaming and hair-dye way too much for his own good. Everything was steady, safe and familiar.

But yet he was missing something. He had been missing something for a very long time and even though he couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was, he knew he would eventually leave. Frankly, he thought he had no other choice. The town started to suffocate him, the thought of living here for the rest of his life kept him awake at night. Although he was scared, so scared of giving up on the comfort of his own house and dealing with responsibilities at such a young age, when he finally graduated he suddenly didn’t have a trace of doubt. He couldn’t have stayed, he couldn’t imagine his future in that place; except no one, not even his family, believed that he would actually do it.

And yet he did.

He booked a plane ticket as soon as he got to know that he got accepted to university.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it seemed to everyone. He spent months researching every last bit of information he had to know about his uni, life in England and finances. He managed to save some money from his part-time summer job but he knew it would be hard at first. Not only was he going to be left completely to his own devices, but he would also have to adjust to different customs and lifestyle, which might take a while. Nevertheless he was still determined to finally become independent and to prove everyone who didn’t believe in him wrong.  
It was only weeks later that he realized the true reason behind his decision.

One night when he couldn’t sleep, yet again kept awake by the weird sounds in his house, he realized that he was just running away. Most of the people he knew travelled around the world for adventure and fun, unlike Josh, who was driven by constant fear of being in one place for too long. All his life he was running away from feeling empty, running away from his problems, hoping he could escape them and never look back. He was foolish enough to believe that one day he would find that place on Earth where all his past would disappear. Even though deep inside he knew it would never happen, he continued to dream about it, about being free, about being someone else.

He left his hometown because he thought he had nothing to lose.

He had no clue he was only about to lose everything.

***

The first night in Josh’s new house was terrible. Not only was he cold and had to sleep under his own hoodie due to the lack of a proper duvet (Josh scolded himself mentally for forgetting to buy it first thing when he arrived), but the house itself made unsettling noises, the pipes in the walls gurgling ominously and the wind moaning furiously in the draughty rooms. Josh put it all down to the fact that the house was old, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t shaking in fear the whole night. There was something about this place, something that made him anxious and even though he tried to stay rational about it he couldn’t ignore his intuition.

He had decided to move in summer to give himself some time to figure everything out before university starts. He had found a few flats to rent but he couldn’t afford any of them and he also didn’t want to stay in the halls. University halls, the reckoned, were too crowded and noisy for his liking. Yet, as the days went by and he still hadn’t managed to find anything, he kind of started to deal with the thought of having to fit all his belongings in a room not bigger than a prison cell and sharing a bathroom with some random people who always stole his shower gel. He had already started to read tutorials on how to fit a mini safe deposit box into a wardrobe when he stumbled upon an ad that simply said “cheap house to rent immediately”. Without second thoughts he rang the number and he got the keys two weeks later. The landlady was a shy, elderly woman who didn’t speak much and only answered in short sentences. She said the house belonged to the city council and she was only collecting the rent on their behalf, but Josh has serious doubts about that. It was a bargain, he couldn’t deny it, but he knew there was going to be a catch somewhere. First of all, the house looked like it had been left empty for years. If it really belonged to the council they wouldn’t let it get to such a state, Josh deducted. Despite the questionable credentials of the landlady and the overall riskiness of the situation he knew he had no other choice, not for now, at least.

***

The situation from the first night kept on repeating. Josh would hear things almost every night and it slowly started to drive him crazy. Due to the lack of sleep he constantly felt tired and on top of that he was also stressed out with all the things he had to sort out. He finally managed to buy himself a set of bedding, but setting up a new bank account and utility suppliers was, as he found out, not as easy as he had originally thought, especially given the fact that he was still technically unemployed. He had started looking for a job but to no substantial avail and the money that he managed to save had shrunk significantly.

In other words: he was fucked.

After a week of virtually no sleep and living off cheese and toast, he decided to do something about his life and actually go outside. It was late, he didn’t know the city and the last thing he wanted was for people to realize that he’s “the new guy” in the neighbourhood, but the thought of spending one more minute in his house seemed even worse.

Once outside, he quickly realized that he had no idea where to go, and because he was a lonely, shy loser like that, he decided to take advantage of the fact that he was a legal grown-up in the UK and buy some alcohol in a nearby store. The night was quiet and warm, so he decided to take a walk around. Yup. That sounded like a perfect idea in Josh’s head. Maybe he could even find a remote, dark spot where he could drink his beer and listen to music? At least getting drunk would help him fall asleep, right? He wandered around the streets for a bit, taking in the eerie scenery of British suburbs, full of red brick terraced houses and sad, messy front gardens. In the distance he could see the lights of the city centre but for some reason they seemed unreachable, almost not real.

He took a turn left, then right, then another left, until he finally stopped to look around, trying to remember how he actually wound up there. All the houses in the streets looked exactly the same and it made Josh feel like he was trapped in some sort of a maze with no escape. Everything around him looked sleepy and lifeless, even the wind had died out, leaving the leafy trees silent. In front of him there was a small green field and next to it, adherent to a wall of trees, was a cemetery. Josh should have probably looked at the area’s map before even going out of the house, but he was so caught up in his own sleep-deprived misery that he just couldn’t care less. Without hesitation he stepped through the gate and walked a little bit down the small pathway that lead into the centre of the cemetery.

The place was relatively small, with only a tiny, centrally-located chapel with a tower rising above the trees. There were fewer lamp posts here, which made the candles on the ground seem brighter. As Josh walked around he noticed how different the headstones were from the ones he remembered from his hometown. Each grave was unique, decorated with memorabilia, flowers and hand-made gifts for the loved ones who were no longer alive but still remembered and treasured by their relatives. It actually made Josh tear up just a little bit. Even the trees were incorporated into some people’s graves, wind chimes and fairy lights making them look simply beautiful, unlike all the other graveyards Josh had seen before, which were just sad and dull. Ironically, he thought, the cemetery looked better than the streets themselves. Maybe people cared more about the dead than about the living in this city?

Josh’s trail of thought was suddenly interrupted when he noticed a dark corner and the end of the cemetery. He came closer and noticed an old, eroded headstone hidden in the shadow. It looked completely forgotten, the name on it barely legible due to negligence of the stone. There were no flowers, not even a single candle next to it. Josh took a closer look and tried to decipher the engravings but he could only work out the last name and the dates of birth and death.

“Joseph, 12.01.1989 – 06.18.2007”

No epitaph. No decorations. Nothing.

-“Fuck” – he mumbled, a sudden chill going through his body like a wave when he quickly calculated the dead person's age. „They were only eighteen when they died”.

Whoever this person was, they were Josh’s age when they died.

He had a feeling that this wasn’t a natural death, either.

It wasn’t even that long ago, and yet the headstone looked abandoned, as though no one took care of it, no one visited. The family of this person must have probably long forgotten about them, not even bothering to leave a stupid light or a flower.

Josh suddenly felt sick and decided to take a sip of his beer to feel braver. He also thought about putting his earplugs in but he decided he needed to stay alert in case there was a caretaker walking around.

He sat down on the grass next to the grave, suddenly feeling something nostalgic about it. He drank and thought about this person, how they could have died and what happened to their family. There were so many questions left unanswered. Why was the grave situated so far away from all the rest? Did that person live here? Who were they?  
He was halfway through his fourth can of beer when he suddenly heard something. At first it sounded like a gust of wind, but then it seemed to get clearer and closer to Josh. The boy looked around, starting to feel a bit scared, but there was no one around. Maybe it was just the alcohol and the lack of sleep? After all he was sitting alone in the cemetery at night, he thought his tired mind must have been playing with him.

Until he heard it again.

“Get out of here.”

An inhuman voice, clear and loud and right next to his ear. - "Get out!" - it threatened again, this time even more distinct and a lot more angry.

But Josh understood the message the first time; he hastily scrambled up his things and sprinted out from the cemetery and straight to his house. In his frightened state he somehow managed to find a way back, but it was only later on that he realized he left his earplugs on the grass there.

Which meant that he would have to go back to get them.

-“Tomorrow” - he thought to himself, still shaken and out of breath, and impulsively looked at the calendar in his phone.

It was exactly 2.30 am on the eighteenth of June.

The anniversary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment if you read this, it motivates me sooo much!  
> Also I'm sorry for any mistakes.  
> More action planned, whooo!
> 
> xoxo K.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!  
> OMG, thank you SO MUCH for all your comments! It made me so excited to publish another chapter. Seriously, you are incredible <3.
> 
> Also, I must warn you. This is where things start to get nasty, and by nasty I mean child abuse, rape and minor Stockholm syndrome. Please read it very carefully. I could not stress it well enough.
> 
> As much as writing this fanfic brings me relief, it is also very difficult so I'm not sure when I could write another chapter.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy. Love y'all!

-„Get out of here! How many times do I have to tell you that I’m busy, huh!?”

-”But…but I just wanted to see! You know I hate surprises, I just wanted to…”

-“I don’t care what you wanted! Get out of here and wait in the bedroom. I’ll show you when it’s ready.”

***

-“It’s…perfect, thank you.”

-“Didn’t you forget about something?”

-“Thank you, sir.”

-“Good boy. You’re such a good boy. Now, on your knees. Hey, no, don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. Last time…I just got carried away. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

***

-“I hate you! I’m leaving!”

-“Oh really? And where will you go, hm? You have nowhere to go! You have no one but me! No one wants you, you hear me!?”

-“I don’t care where I’ll go, anywhere is better than here! I’m tired of this sick game!”

-“So this is how you see it, yeah? A game? I will fucking show you a game you ungrateful piece of shit! I have been so good for you and this is how you repay me!?”

***

-“I will make you want me and hate me. I will make you need me. You won’t be able to live without me and you will love it. You will love every second of it, every second of the pain I give you. I will make you my property, my slave. I will be everything you have.”

***

The sun was barely visible on the overcast sky, but Josh knew it was a new day already. He laid in bed, eyes wide open and fear gripping his throat. 

Another nightmare. At that point he should have been already been used to them. But he most definitely wasn’t.

This time, he dreamed of some people’s voices, he heard a dialogue between two people. He couldn’t remember exactly what they were talking about but they sounded like they were arguing. Josh shivered at the memory of the predatory, spiteful voice of a man, shouting at what sounded like a child or a teenager. The young person he heard was absolutely terrified and Josh just couldn’t help but feel a sickening feeling, like a protest or a desire to take revenge. After a while of sitting in silence, Josh finally brought himself to get up and get on with his everyday life, trying hard to erase the horrors of the night.

First, this…something, there, at the cemetery, and now another twisted nightmare. His life suddenly got so much harder since he moved into this goddamned city. Not to mention he still had to go and get his headphones back and let’s just say, he wasn’t looking forward to it.

Josh decided to put it off for as long as he could. Instead, he concentrated on sending out more CVs and catching up with his family back home. It was hard to admit but Josh secretly missed his friends and family already. Sometimes he felt so lonely sitting in his house that he spent hours talking on his phone, trying not to think about the fact that he was fucking tortured by his own house and mind. His mother always told him how proud she was of him choosing to do sociology at university and how everyone was sure he would do great. Josh liked to listen to his mom’s chirpy voice but deep inside he was scared that he might fail and ruin her expectations.

In the afternoon, when he finally finished unpacking all of his belongings (yes, it took him that long), he reluctantly decided to make his way to the cemetery to grab his headphones quickly and never set foot in there again. He still wasn’t sure if what happened was even real. He might have been just simply drunk or maybe it was the place’s caretaker shouting from the chapel? Whatever it was, Josh was sure there was a logical explanation behind it. It’s not that de didn’t believe in the paranormal, in fact, quite the contrary. He was almost certain there had to be something out there, whether it were aliens, ghosts or some other creatures. He had heard way too many stories in his lifetime to simply dismiss the possibility and, well, he also experienced some things that were hard to explain. Josh had an open mind and he was even a little bit excited when he read or heard stories about the unexplained. This time, however, it was very different. He didn’t want to believe it was all due to some supernatural power, simply because this would mean that this power was messing up his entire life. And also haunting his sorry excuse for a house. 

So, Josh was very adamant that nothing weird was happening, everything was fine, it was all just stress caused by moving far away blah blah blah. There was nothing else. There couldn’t be.

Except…

He shivered when he reached the cemetery, even though it wasn’t very cold outside. The sky looked like it was about to burst open at any moment, heavy dark clouds lingering dangerously low above the ground. The cemetery was, as always, vacant and silent, except for some birds twittering in the trees. Josh made his way straight to the place where he last saw the grave, only to find that...it wasn’t there. He looked around trying to find the spot but the headstone was nowhere to be seen.

-“What the fuck?” – he thought, very eloquently, as he stood in the middle of the cemetery with a confused look on his face. “It’s not possible. It can’t just be gone. Was I this drunk that I imagined it?” 

Josh paced around the cemetery for a while but to no avail. Soon, he had no choice but to admit defeat and leave, as the first drops of rain started to fall from the steel-gray clouds. He put his hands into the pockets of his favorite NASA hoodie when he felt something small and tangled inside.

-“No way, there is no fucking way”, he thought as he stared at his headphones resting in his palm completely intact. 

***

Every day he felt more and more tired and resigned, as if something was draining him off his energy. He remembered the times when he used to be so active, constantly spending hours outside with his friends or indulging in his hobbies. Never in a million years would he have guessed that how bleak and unexciting his life would become in just a few years. He didn’t even feel like himself anymore and that’s what was scaring him the most, this realization that he might have lost something along the way, some very important part of his life.  
After a longer reflection he found out that this part was his childhood.

Gone were the days of his innocent naivety, his curiosity and unconcealed emotionality. He no longer felt excited about anything new; instead he was just constantly scared of any changes. Everything just felt so contaminated, the world around him looked bleak and the people seemed rotten to the core, obsessed with consumption and desperate hedonism. I appeared to him that big cities turned everyone into money-driven, desensitized robots whose only interaction was small talk and one-night-stands.

He also had become a part of this cycle, much to his dismay, and not even the fact that he had no other choice could make him feel less terrible about himself. Josh had thought it might happen, his natural instinct made him predict it, expect it almost. He knew he would be lost in a foreign place and that the day-to-day routine would come into the way of being spontaneous. He knew he would eventually become someone else just to fit in. What he hadn’t realized, however, was how quickly this all would happen and how miserable it would make him feel. He had no clue he would become this lifeless, numb shell of a person that he was now.

Maybe, he thought to himself while staring at his bedroom’s ceiling at night, it was because he left his hometown for all the wrong reasons.

***

A couple of days later Josh finally got a job. He had just come back home from an interview in a small coffee shop in the city centre when he heard loud footsteps coming from the upper floor. 

It was hard to believe but he still hadn’t been upstairs. He knew there were two additional bedrooms and a laundry room up there, but so far he simply hadn’t had a good enough reason to go and check them out. There was also something else, something he was scared of admitting, even to himself. Deep in his guts something was telling him that it wasn’t a good idea to go there. His instincts were always right and he learned to listen to them, hence why he avoided the staircase like fire. It might sound ridiculous but he had a feeling something bad had happened there. After all it was an old house and he knew nothing about the previous tenants or owners.

Josh swallowed, feeling a lump forming in his throat. The footsteps sounded like someone pacing back and forth around the room. Hesitantly, he stepped on the staircase which screeched dreadfully under his weight. When he reached the narrow corridor, he noticed that a door to one of the bedrooms was slightly open, letting in a faint ray of light into the dark hallway. Josh tried to switch on the light but the light bulb must have been burned out. When he stepped closer to the door the footsteps stopped suddenly and the house sank into silence, not even a sound from the outside could be heard. Josh pushed the handle, trying desperately to stay calm but his heart was racing like he had just run a marathon. He carefully walked inside, suddenly feeling the cold embrace him like freezing water.

The room was stuffy, dilapidated and full of dust, furnished only with an old wooden bedframe, a small desk and a floor standing mirror. It was also significantly colder than the rest of the house. Besides a bouquet of withered flowers placed in vase a on a windowsill and a slightly crooked cross on the wall, Josh didn’t see any decorations. The window was small and damaged, the glass broken in a few places. All in all, the room looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. He stood there, unsure of what to do next, looking at the dust dancing in the light. The atmosphere of this seemingly inconspicuous room felt very heavy and suffocating, almost unbearable to Josh. He didn’t know how to name all of this what he was experiencing but he felt something, he knew something was so, so wrong. 

Suddenly, he felt a shiver followed by a nauseating vertigo, the ground quickly collapsing from underneath his feet. His vision started shaking, all the walls around him swayed and bent dangerously. It looked like something was happening to the fabric of reality, he thought, as the colors around him faded and leaked like water damages on an old photographic film. His head was pounding, he tried to get up from the floor but he couldn’t move, he could barely feel his body. The edges of his vision frayed, all the outlines blurred rapidly before a huge burnt hole swallowed everything in front of him. It became completely dark for a second. After a moment suspended in time and space, some shapes started to appear in the bedroom out of nowhere, materializing like smoke in front of his eyes. The scenery changed slightly, the furniture seemed to be newer and the window had metal bars installed behind it. On the wall there were also some things – devices, Josh thought, but he couldn’t see them very clearly. Josh squinted and tried to look around but he found himself paralyzed, completely glued to the ground he was sitting on, his gaze unwillingly focused on what seemed to be vague shapes of two people. His mind struggled to make any sense of it all but quickly gave up, resignation felt like sinking farther down into the abyss. Josh couldn’t fight anymore, his consciousness too week to stay afloat. He felt like he was drowning in his own madness, completely submersing. In the distance he could hear muffled voices that sounded like an old tape recording, but when the sounds got more distinguishable he realized, to his utter shock, that they were the voices from his nightmare.

Cold, slimy horror wrapped itself around Josh’s stomach and ripped into his heart when he heard a loud, desperate, animalistic scream. He had no idea how but he knew what it was.

That was a shriek of a person being cut alive.

-“Please, no!”

Josh felt something wet and warm drip down his cheeks. With a corner of his eye, he thought he saw a boy looking at him from the mirror before he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you got through it safe.  
> Tyler is finally going to show up in the next chapter :).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!  
> Okay, so first off I want to apologise for not adding a chapter last week. As you can imagine, what happened in Orlando really shook me and with the amount of personal shit going on in my life I just simply couldn't bring myself to write. I just wish I was in a better place mentally so that I could promise to update this fic regularly, but I just can't.
> 
> I hope this chapter will make it up to you though it's a bit lighter than the previous ones and maybe this is what I needed right now. However, the trigger warning in the tags still apply!
> 
> Also, again, thank you for all your support and comments, I really appreciate it! <3
> 
> Peace will win, remember. Stay strong.

It hadn’t stopped raining since Josh saw…well, he didn’t know exactly what he saw. All he could remember when he regained consciousness on the floor that day was a feeling of confusion and a severe headache. The room had become eerily quiet again, with only the rain tapping on the windows slowly, almost apologetically. He felt like he was having the worst hangover of his life, except he knew he wasn’t drunk this time. The sudden loss of memory made his already bad state even worse, Josh was now seriously scared and had no idea whether it was real or he was just losing his mind. He thought it was probably both.

With what little he had left of his sanity, he tried to figure out what it all could mean. Sure, he had thought about seeing some sort of a professional, but after a while he scrapped the idea, simply because he didn’t have the time and will to go through a long-winded process of registering with a practice and getting a referral. Besides, what would he even say to the shrink? “Hi, my name’s Josh and I think my house is haunted, do you have pills for that?”. He knew it wasn’t just in his head and he certainly didn’t feel like going through all the embarrassing tests to prove that he is, at best, slightly demented. His mental health, poor though it was due to anxiety, didn’t make him imagine things. If anything, it was only getting worse and worse because of the things he was experiencing.

One night, when the house was particularly turbulent, the cupboard doors opening and closing vehemently and the wind howling in the cracks, Josh decided to do some research online and after a few hours everything started to slowly make sense in his head. He felt like he was finally getting closer to the truth and it took a lot of weight from his shoulders, like he was suddenly able to breathe again. He now had a vague idea of what might be going on, yet there was still a very important piece missing, like the last piece of an elaborate puzzle without which he wasn’t able to solve it. It was almost as if he was trapped in a long corridor, except he didn’t know where and if there was any way out of it. 

After visiting what seemed to be every single paranormal forum on the internet he finally admitted to himself that he wasn’t entirely delusional and his house was haunted, and very much so. What was weird though is that knowing this didn’t scare him any more than he already was, in fact, a tiny part of him was childishly excited, like he has just uncovered a long-kept secret. It was quite relieving to know that it was real and not just his imagination, but most importantly it also meant that he could now take some action to try and stop whatever or whoever was causing him all the trouble.

His initial thought was to call for some priest to conduct whatever rite was necessary, but it quickly started to sound funny in Josh’s head. After all, he didn’t know what kind of energy he was dealing with and if he really believed an exorcism would help. He had seen way too many horror movies to know that messing up with something out of this world can quickly turn into an absolute train wreck. Not to mention his intuition telling him that the violent nature of the energy he experienced might not necessarily mean it was evil. There was just far too many “what ifs” for Josh to get religion involved with it. He’d rather try and deal with it on his own, as reckless as it may seem. If only he knew what it was exactly that resided in these walls…

Josh stopped his train of thought for a second there, trying to recall what happened in the upstairs bedroom a few days before. For some reason he knew that it was an important part of his newly-discovered theory, although his gut feeling told him it wasn’t necessarily a pleasant one. He remembered feeling guilty and ashamed, as though he had done something wrong, and that feeling lingered to his skin no matter how hard he was trying to scrub it off him in the shower. There was just something so wrong about it, about the way he felt after that day. 

Suddenly, he felt something cold, like a touch, right on his left shoulder, and he turned his head rapidly only to find that there was nothing there. His laptop’s screen flickered a little before completely going off. Josh was sitting there with his eyes wide open, the fear paralyzing him and gluing him to the chair. He could feel the room getting colder and colder, the shivers running down his spine like tiny, slimy feet. He swallowed as he heard muffled voices and footsteps coming from upstairs, suddenly remembering the vision he had before. The footsteps became louder and started to move towards the staircase. Josh was still sitting in the same place, unable to even turn the light on. He looked at the door anxiously, listening as the wood of the stairs moaned under a weight that wasn’t his own, wasn’t human. 

After what seemed to be the whole eternity to Josh, his bedroom door squeaked loudly and opened up just a little bit. The room felt even colder and darker now, like all of the world’s happiness had suddenly disappeared. 

-“I’m not scared of you!” – Josh tried to scream, but the words that escaped his mouth sounded more like he was choking. –“You hear me? I don’t know what you are but I’m not scared of you! This is my house now!”

Silence, and then:

-“Is that so?”

A quiet whisper, right in his ear.

Josh swallowed again, his heart beating so fast that it was making it hard for him to breathe.

-“Y…yes. I know…that you don’t want to hurt me. I’m not scared of you.”

He still couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black room. His eyes scanned through the darkness aimlessly, trying to find the source of the voice, trying to find anything at all.

Then, he heard it again, this time the voice sounded a bit softer.

-“And what makes you think that I don’t want to hurt you, Joshua?”

It knew his name. How the hell did it know his name? Josh’s eyes welled up with fear, yet he was determined to say what he had to say now that he actually had a chance to talk to this…creature. He felt the adrenaline rush into his blood, making him so much more reckless in his actions than he already was.

-“Because…because if you did, you would have already done it by now. You won’t hurt me, you’re too weak to-“

-‘Don’t you dare call me weak!” – the voice growled furiously and suddenly the window flew open, letting in the smell of leaves and summer air. Josh took a step back, trying hard not to collapse and cry. He felt so small and alone, like there was no one in the world that cared about him. There was only him and his fear, consuming him from the inside and tearing his heart into pieces. He looked up and in that moment the light in the room started flickering, revealing the window slamming furiously in the wind. Out of the corner of his eye, Josh saw a thin trickle of dark liquid running down the wall, then another one just next to it. He felt something warm dripping out of his nose and when he raised his hand to touch it, it was covered in blood. Before he knew it, the floor was gleaming with a layer of thick crimson. He felt as if his heart literally sank down to his stomach.

-“Stop! Please, stop it!” – he pleaded desperately and in the blink of an eye it was gone; the window was shut, the light perfectly still and the floor only covered with a bit of dust.  
He still had his back pressed against the wall when he saw a silhouette of a person standing in the other corner of the room near the door.  
The person, as he quickly realized, was the boy from his nightmares and the one he saw in the upstairs bedroom. He was rather thin and dressed in a black hoodie and black jeans that contrasted with his bright red socks. Josh couldn’t see his face very well from where he was standing, still absolutely flabbergasted, but he noticed he had short brown hair and huge, dark eyes. There was something about these eyes, Josh thought, that made him want to wrap his arms around him and never, ever let go.

-“What the fuck?” – was all Josh could muster, and then he immediately felt stupid, because there was probably a ghost standing right in front of him and these were the only words that came into his mind.

-“I mean, um, I…” – He tried to buy some time with talking but he quickly gave up. There was nothing he could say. It was like his mind was just switched off, his memories completely erased.

-“I don’t like it when people say that I’m weak, you know. I just don’t. And you’re right, I don’t want to hurt you. I…I snapped out.” – The strange boy in the corner of his room spoke, his voice calm and soft again. He almost sounded…sorry? No, Josh thought, it couldn’t be that. And yet, the silhouette in front of him flickered slightly in the air and took a hesitant step towards Josh, reaching out a hand that seemed surprisingly…human.

-“Um, listen, I’m sorry for scaring you. It just sort of…happens, I guess. I can’t control it, not really.”

Josh felt too stupid to even process things in his mind, so the boy continued.

-“It’s just…I think it’s the only way I can show myself to people. I just wanted you to see me. I just wanted to say hello. Please don’t freak out, alright?”

The boy was now only a few feet in front of Josh, still holding his arm reached out like some mime in a weird comedy sketch. Was he expecting Josh to come and shake it? Hell, Josh was too dumbfounded to speak, let alone shake hands with an actual fucking ghost.

-“What…who are you?” – He uttered after a period of excruciating silence.

-“My name’s Tyler. Who are you?”

His eyes looked so honest and curious and Josh just couldn’t stop staring, even though he was still partly petrified.

-“I’m Josh.”

-“I know.” – the boy - Tyler – said, squinting and turning his head a little at Josh, exactly like he did in Josh’s nightmares. He looked as if he was thinking deeply about something.

Suddenly, he went stiff and the colors started fading from his face, his outlines became blurry. He stood there for a second with his eyes set right into Josh’s, before he spoke again.

-“Upstairs bedroom. You need to find it, Josh. You need to find out. Please, find it.”

And then he disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me or did this turn out a bit short?  
> Also yes, I am a master of cliffhangers because I like to torture ppl. *evil grin*  
> HEY I ACCIDENTALY INCLUDED A REFERENCE TO TREES OMG I'M??  
> I hope this chapter was kind of alright? Idek anymore.
> 
> I also have another fic planned set in a prison AU (just look at Tyler's icon on twitter I mean WHAT THE FUCK). Let me know if I should write it?
> 
> 'You never know a murderer sitting next to you'


End file.
